foobar vs. jriver(a different take)

i think with these two you need to compare apples to oranges. they excel in different areas. the best sound is the ultimate goal,right?

put foobar on wasapi at 16/44.1. that is how it will sound best i think most agree. however, compare it to jriver like this. wasapi-eventstyle(very important),oversampler at 24/192,present 24 bit's in a 32 bit package(like dithering on 24 bit)..

now, i think they seem almost identical. it certainly is not like px100 vs hd800 or anything. more like hd600 vs. hd650. whichever you like better. it is kind of sad though that jriver has to be set in that manner to sound nearly as good as foobar at bit perfect. so try it that way if you want. i a/b'd for a hour and could not come to a conclusion when they were set that way. i'd still say foobar is the winner for a lot of reasons.

glad no one was interested in this. jriver's resampler is a cpu resource joke. the commit charge ram is also a joke. foobar still sounds better with or without resampling. not to mention sox uses about 1% of an i7 whereas jriver's resampler uses about 25%! the only thing possibly good on jriver is the event style wasapi. i wish someone would implement that on foobar. still, that is not a good reason alone to use jriver. i did not realise foobar was better until i switched back. i was also wrong about it being a slight difference. it is a decent difference indeed. well, as i said first off foobar still wins. i just had to confirm it

Interesting. I wasn't aware of that Event Style WASAPI output. That does indeed sound like a worthwhile addition to foobar2000, as long as it would be added to the output options available, and not replacing the current WASAPI output, as it's mostly known as stable and a good performer, at least until the revised version proved to be bulletproof

glad no one was interested in this. jriver's resampler is a cpu resource joke. the commit charge ram is also a joke. foobar still sounds better with or without resampling. not to mention sox uses about 1% of an i7 whereas jriver's resampler uses about 25%!

The 25% may be something else. I've got an i7 and my CPU is bouncing between 0 and 1%.

jriver's resampler is a cpu resource joke. the commit charge ram is also a joke. foobar still sounds better with or without resampling. not to mention sox uses about 1% of an i7 whereas jriver's resampler uses about 25%!

I watched CPU use with Task manager as I played 44.1/16 flac files with 192/24 upsampling on my five year old 1.83 GHz Intel E6300. In the first experiment, I had the play from memory option checked.

I saw CPU use of 12-14% for a few seconds at the beginning of the track and then CPU use dropped to 1-2%.

When I ran the same experiment without the "play files from memory ..." option, CPU use is 12-14% for a second or two and then declines to a level of 3-4% for the remainder of the track.

Maybe you are using a really, really slow CPU chip. Maybe you watched for a few seconds and drew a conclusion from that.

> commit charge ram is also a joke

What are you talking about? Do you mean the "play files from memory ..." option.

In what way is that option a joke? I've used JRMC with that option checked and without. Works fine both ways.

I ran my previous experiments with MC 15. I ran similar tests on MC 16 on a PC with an AMD 2.4 GHz X2 CPU (also a low end chip from 5 years ago.) I got CPU use of 20-25%. I presume that the difference is that MC 16 does all its arithmetic in 64 bit float while MC 15 uses 32 bit float.

So maybe you would prefer lower CPU use from using 32 bit float for the upsampling operations.

Both Foobar and Jriver are pretty respectable players for PC. On a slower less hardware optimized PC

Foobar wins hands down. But in my system using VLink Async USB converter with Ag connectors, PS Audio Dlink III Dac, tube electronics to Magneplanar 1.7s, JRiver is superior for tonal color detail and popping out background details that Foobar glosses over. It did take switching from solid state to tube amplification for this difference to stand out.

Both Foobar and Jriver are pretty respectable players for PC. On a slower less hardware optimized PC
Foobar wins hands down. But in my system using VLink Async USB converter with Ag connectors, PS Audio Dlink III Dac, tube electronics to Magneplanar 1.7s, JRiver is superior for tonal color detail and popping out background details that Foobar glosses over. It did take switching from solid state to tube amplification for this difference to stand out.

I just went back to foobar from Jriver 30 day trial and I do believe J has a richer, fuller sound. Foobar native 16/44.1 no filters and Jriver with no add ons. I'm going to run some side by side tests to listen to a/b comparo more closely with an extended trial. At $50 and $charges for updates, there had better be a noticeable difference.

Indeed, foobar2000 is bit-perfect when not resampling and its built-in polyphase resampler is quite respectable. You need to enable that in the DSP - otherwise DirectSound does the resampling with its meh quality, even if you choose WASAPI. Only Kernel Streaming (KS) and ASIO (where available) is free from that and it will fail instead if the card doesn't support the rate directly.

I'd recommend setting the Windows output quality to 44100 Hz, 24 bit stereo, since most material is available at this sample rate and upgrading bit range is free.

However, there is a SoX resampler plugin that does provide better quality - allows sharper rolloff at the cost of somewhat more (rather still inaudible) ringing, linear->minimum phase adjustment (as if anyone needs that). It's a bit faster than PPHS at the same quality setting. (which is Medium)

I'd personally congratulate anyone who hears (as validated by ABX) an actual difference between PPHS and SoX at high sample rates. (at low it's pretty possible - SoX has less noise and can have sharper cutoff)